Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of fairness concern on the optimal pricing, carbon emission reduction (CER), green marketing efforts (GME) and utility of supply chain members in a two-echelon low-carbon supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer. First, three basic models that consider the manufacturer’s different attitudes toward the retailer’s fairness concern are constructed. The optimal decisions of these models are obtained. Second, these optimal solutions are compared, and the effects of some key parameters including fairness concern on the optimal decisions and utility are examined for the three models. Furthermore, the manufacturer may misestimate the retailer’s fairness concern; therefore, an extended model is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors adopt the manufacturer-led Stackelberg game theoretic framework, where the manufacturer decides the wholesale price and CER level and, then, the retailer determines the retail price and GME.

Findings

The results show that fairness concern has a negative impact on the wholesale price, the level of CER and GME, and fairness concern are not always beneficial for maximizing utility, although it is related to whether the manufacturer pays attention to the retailer’s fairness concern. The manufacturer will gain more utility when considering the fairness concern of retailers than non-consideration. Overestimating or underestimating the fairness concern of the retailers does not lead to benefits for the manufacturer.

Research limitations/implications

This study has the following two limitations that need to be addressed in future research. First, the authors only consider the fairness concern of a single retailer but not peer-induced fairness among multiple competing retailers, which can be taken into account in future studies. Second, the demand function is linearly related to price, CER and GME. Because of the uncertainty of market information, the uncertainty demand function can be further considered.

Originality/value

This paper simultaneously considers the factors CER, GME and fairness concern. The utility function of the retailer is established according to taking the Nash bargaining solution as a fairness reference point, and four different models are constructed and compared.

中文翻译：

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考虑公平性的两级低碳供应链碳减排与绿色营销决策

目的

本文的目的是研究公平关注对最优定价、碳减排 (CER)、绿色营销努力 (GME) 和供应链成员效用的影响，该供应链由一个两级低碳供应链组成。制造商和一家零售商。首先，构建了三个考虑制造商对零售商公平关注的不同态度的基本模型。获得了这些模型的最优决策。其次，比较了这些最优解，并检验了包括公平性在内的一些关键参数对最优决策和效用的影响。此外，制造商可能会错误估计零售商的公平问题；因此，提出了一个扩展模型。

设计/方法/方法

作者采用制造商主导的 Stackelberg 博弈论框架，制造商决定批发价格和 CER 水平，然后零售商决定零售价格和 GME。

发现

结果表明，公平关注对批发价格、CER和GME水平有负面影响，公平关注并不总是有利于效用最大化，尽管它与制造商是否关注零售商的公平关注有关。在考虑零售商的公平问题时，制造商将获得更多的效用。高估或低估零售商对公平的关注并不会给制造商带来好处。

研究限制/影响

本研究有以下两个局限性，需要在未来的研究中加以解决。首先，作者只考虑单个零售商的公平问题，而不考虑多个竞争零售商之间的同行引起的公平问题，这可以在未来的研究中加以考虑。其次，需求函数与价格、CER 和 GME 线性相关。由于市场信息的不确定性，可以进一步考虑不确定性需求函数。

原创性/价值

本文同时考虑了CER、GME和公平关注的因素。以纳什议价解为公平参考点，建立零售商效用函数，构建并比较了四种不同的模型。